I was trying to use WinMFS to replace the (failing, but not yet dead) drives in a Sony SVR-3000 this morning, but since it's been a couple of years since I did it last time I managed to flub it somehow. Now it refuses to boot up, no matter which set of drives I use (and yes, I tried both options under Restore Bootpage).

I could have sworn I had an image saved somewhere for just such an emergency, but after several hours of searching it hasn't turned up.

I was trying to use WinMFS to replace the (failing, but not yet dead) drives in a Sony SVR-3000 this morning, but since it's been a couple of years since I did it last time I managed to flub it somehow. Now it refuses to boot up, no matter which set of drives I use (and yes, I tried both options under Restore Bootpage).

I could have sworn I had an image saved somewhere for just such an emergency, but after several hours of searching it hasn't turned up.

Lil' help?...

Let me see if I understand.

You have the version of that S2 Sony that came with 2 drives instead of one?

You tried to copy the 2 drives currently in the unit to 2 other drives?

And now the new replacements won't work and the ones that were in it won't work either?

I haven't heard of that unit having problems with capacitors going bad in the power supply, but since you've already got the lid off you should eliminate that as a possible problem.

I know that the S1 Sony and Philips models could use each others images to a limited degree if you swapped remotes.

(Only recommended for test and experimentation purposes)

Perhaps a TCD240xxx image (which will supposedly work on a 140 as well) would boot up enough to let you confirm that the Sony itself is still working.

You could put it on the replacement drive set, or one of them, and then overwrite it later when you get the right image.

Here are images that will need to restore to a drive bigger than the average 80GB drive (orginally was on a Maxtor with slightly higher LBA number than other brands's 80GB drives).

You have the version of that S2 Sony that came with 2 drives instead of one?

You tried to copy the 2 drives currently in the unit to 2 other drives?

And now the new replacements won't work and the ones that were in it won't work either?

I haven't heard of that unit having problems with capacitors going bad in the power supply, but since you've already got the lid off you should eliminate that as a possible problem.

I know that the S1 Sony and Philips models could use each others images to a limited degree if you swapped remotes.

(Only recommended for test and experimentation purposes)

Perhaps a TCD240xxx image (which will supposedly work on a 140 as well) would boot up enough to let you confirm that the Sony itself is still working.

You could put it on the replacement drive set, or one of them, and then overwrite it later when you get the right image.

Here are images that will need to restore to a drive bigger than the average 80GB drive (orginally was on a Maxtor with slightly higher LBA number than other brands's 80GB drives).

Actually, this is an S2 Sony I upgraded many years ago, shortly after I first bought it (IIRC, replacing a single 80GB with two 120GB drives). It's been through at least two drive replacements since then, as each set inevitably just got old and failed. Both previous replacements went off without a hitch using the old Mfs Tools 2.0.

Since then I discovered WinMFS, and -- especially given that I no longer own any PCs with two IDE connectors (which also means I couldn't use something like Instant Cake) -- figured this would make it easy enough to create an image of the old (failing) drives from the Sony, then copy that image to a new pair of drives. But, like I said, I flubbed it somewhere along the line and now neither set of drives will successfully boot. I don't think it's any kind of hardware problem, although I'm not even sure I'd know how to check if that was the case.

I suppose I'll try the suggested image and at least to see if it will boot. Thanks for the help so far...

Actually, this is an S2 Sony I upgraded many years ago, shortly after I first bought it (IIRC, replacing a single 80GB with two 120GB drives). It's been through at least two drive replacements since then, as each set inevitably just got old and failed. Both previous replacements went off without a hitch using the old Mfs Tools 2.0.

Since then I discovered WinMFS, and -- especially given that I no longer own any PCs with two IDE connectors (which also means I couldn't use something like Instant Cake) -- figured this would make it easy enough to create an image of the old (failing) drives from the Sony, then copy that image to a new pair of drives. But, like I said, I flubbed it somewhere along the line and now neither set of drives will successfully boot. I don't think it's any kind of hardware problem, although I'm not even sure I'd know how to check if that was the case.

I suppose I'll try the suggested image and at least to see if it will boot. Thanks for the help so far...

If you have a pair of drives that were in the Sony, I'd think you'd have to connect both to the PC running WinMFS to make a proper image.

Do you have only one PATA/IDE header, and either the slave or master position taken up by your CD or DVD drive?

If you have a pair of drives that were in the Sony, I'd think you'd have to connect both to the PC running WinMFS to make a proper image.

Do you have only one PATA/IDE header, and either the slave or master position taken up by your CD or DVD drive?

The motherboard has one IDE connector (header?), and as you know, a given connector supports two drives, one master and one slave. I had both Sony drives connected at the same time.

All the other drives in the PC (including the BD/DVD/CD drive, along with the SSD I use as a main drive, the two 1TB I use for storage, and the older 500GB one I use just to back up the SSD regularly) use SATA. This is actually the first time I've used the IDE connector since I built the PC.

Actually, now that I think of it, could the problem have been getting the Sony drives attached to the PC backwards, reversing the master/slave setup? Both drives had been jumpered for cable select, and for convenience I used a different cable to hook them to the PC. I'm usually pretty careful about such things, but who knows?

IIRC (and all things considered, I'm probably not), once I had the PC booted to Windows (W7 64-bit), I couldn't get WinMFS to recognize the Tivo drives until I thought to run the program as an administrator. At that point, the A drive was listing as "S2 or S3 Tivo" but the B was showing as "windows". I tried making an image anyway and got an error message (something like "only one of these drives is actually from a a Tivo"). I then tried rebooting the PC and running WinMFS as administrator the first time, and this time both drives came up as Tivo. Yay. I made an image (saving to one of the PC's SATA storage drives), shut off the PC, hooked up the two new drives, rebooted the PC, and tried using WinMFS to restore the image to the new drives. It asked me if I wanted to expand to both drives, which I thought a little odd, but went ahead and did. After slipping the new drives into the Tivo, I hooked it up to the TV, but it never got past the "Welcome. Powering up" message. Putting the old drives back in got the same result. I tried hooking the new drives up to the PC again, running WinMFS and trying "Restore Bootpage" -- didn't help. I tried bootpage Option 2, and that didn't work either.

At that point, I figured my only option was to see if I could track down the image I thought I'd saved somewhere and try to restore from that, but then I couldn't find it despite a thorough and exhausting search, and presume it's been lost to the ages. So I posted my woes on a couple of different boards, seeing if anyone had a spare SVR3000 image they might throw my way. This pretty much brings you up to date.

The motherboard has one IDE connector (header?), and as you know, a given connector supports two drives, one master and one slave. I had both Sony drives connected at the same time.

All the other drives in the PC (including the BD/DVD/CD drive, along with the SSD I use as a main drive, the two 1TB I use for storage, and the older 500GB one I use just to back up the SSD regularly) use SATA. This is actually the first time I've used the IDE connector since I built the PC.

Actually, now that I think of it, could the problem have been getting the Sony drives attached to the PC backwards, reversing the master/slave setup? Both drives had been jumpered for cable select, and for convenience I used a different cable to hook them to the PC. I'm usually pretty careful about such things, but who knows?

IIRC (and all things considered, I'm probably not), once I had the PC booted to Windows (W7 64-bit), I couldn't get WinMFS to recognize the Tivo drives until I thought to run the program as an administrator. At that point, the A drive was listing as "S2 or S3 Tivo" but the B was showing as "windows". I tried making an image anyway and got an error message (something like "only one of these drives is actually from a a Tivo"). I then tried rebooting the PC and running WinMFS as administrator the first time, and this time both drives came up as Tivo. Yay. I made an image (saving to one of the PC's SATA storage drives), shut off the PC, hooked up the two new drives, rebooted the PC, and tried using WinMFS to restore the image to the new drives. It asked me if I wanted to expand to both drives, which I thought a little odd, but went ahead and did. After slipping the new drives into the Tivo, I hooked it up to the TV, but it never got past the "Welcome. Powering up" message. Putting the old drives back in got the same result. I tried hooking the new drives up to the PC again, running WinMFS and trying "Restore Bootpage" -- didn't help. I tried bootpage Option 2, and that didn't work either.

At that point, I figured my only option was to see if I could track down the image I thought I'd saved somewhere and try to restore from that, but then I couldn't find it despite a thorough and exhausting search, and presume it's been lost to the ages. So I posted my woes on a couple of different boards, seeing if anyone had a spare SVR3000 image they might throw my way. This pretty much brings you up to date.

Again, thanks for the help.

One thing to watch out for is jumpering for cable select versus master and slave.

Is the IDE cable in the Sony an 80 conductor 40 pin, or the older 40 conductor 40 pin type?

One thing to watch out for is jumpering for cable select versus master and slave.

Is the IDE cable in the Sony an 80 conductor 40 pin, or the older 40 conductor 40 pin type?

Interesting -- now that you mention it, the IDE cable in the Sony is an older 40 wire version. Does that make any difference?

[I hope not, because as it happens, that cable broke during the last time I was taking the unit apart. If that's the case, now I'm gonna have to go digging through my Ancient Spare Parts box looking for an older IDE cable...]

Interesting -- now that you mention it, the IDE cable in the Sony is an older 40 wire version. Does that make any difference?

[I hope not, because as it happens, that cable broke during the last time I was taking the unit apart. If that's the case, now I'm gonna have to go digging through my Ancient Spare Parts box looking for an older IDE cable...]

The later TiVo brand S2s (which were not designed to accomodate 2 drives) came with 80 conductor 40 pin cables and drives jumpered cable select, but I think that Sony was one of the first S2s, and other than being designed for either one or two drives, I'm not sure how much S1 heritage that Sony carried over, or if it's IDE controller knows how to do 80 conductor style cable select (which differs somewhat, I think, from the old 40 conductor style cable select), so maybe you need to jumper the drives master and slave so that the drives tell the controller and not the other way around.

The later TiVo brand S2s (which were not designed to accomodate 2 drives) came with 80 conductor 40 pin cables and drives jumpered cable select, but I think that Sony was one of the first S2s, and other than being designed for either one or two drives, I'm not sure how much S1 heritage that Sony carried over, or if it's IDE controller knows how to do 80 conductor style cable select (which differs somewhat, I think, from the old 40 conductor style cable select), so maybe you need to jumper the drives master and slave so that the drives tell the controller and not the other way around.

Worth a try I guess -- at this point I'll try anything. Still, if anyone has a drive image, that would be appreciated as well...

The later TiVo brand S2s (which were not designed to accomodate 2 drives) came with 80 conductor 40 pin cables and drives jumpered cable select, but I think that Sony was one of the first S2s, and other than being designed for either one or two drives, I'm not sure how much S1 heritage that Sony carried over, or if it's IDE controller knows how to do 80 conductor style cable select (which differs somewhat, I think, from the old 40 conductor style cable select), so maybe you need to jumper the drives master and slave so that the drives tell the controller and not the other way around.

My S2DTs all came with 40 conductor cables. It shouldn't matter, but when I tried to use the 80 conductor cable that came with a pre-imaged drive from DVRUpgrade it wouldn't boot up. I went back to the original cable and all was good.

My S2DTs all came with 40 conductor cables. It shouldn't matter, but when I tried to use the 80 conductor cable that came with a pre-imaged drive from DVRUpgrade it wouldn't boot up. I went back to the original cable and all was good.

You're talking about the TCD649080 or TCD649180, right?

The 3 I've got came with 80 conductor 40 pin cables, about 4" long, with the blue plug on the end plugged onto the motherboard header and the black on the end plugged into the 80GB WD drive, which was jumpered CS.

But the S2 DT was the last of the S2s, and the Sony 3000 one of the first, so they may not have the same IDE controller chip or circuitry.

Early in my SATA/IDE adapter experiments (avoid the SunPlus chipsets like the plague) I got an S2 DT to recognize one adapter jumpered master and another jumpered slave on a 40 conductor cable, so it's backwards compatible.

(Currently that machine is using the twinbreeze bracket, including the 80 conductor cable weaknees includes)

The question here is whether the Sony is frontwards compatible with 80 conductor cables.

I do not know, but the chance that it might not be makes doing the master/slave jumpering thing with a 40 conductor cable a valid troubleshooting technique.

Apparently in the early days of DVRupgrade's Instant Cake image cds there was a need to have the drive or drives jumpered master/slave instead of cable select for the image write to be successful, and maybe even after being put back in the TiVo. I really don't understand why it would make a difference, but hard drives seem to involve a lot of voodoo where the phase of the moon has to be just right and it matters in which direction you smear the goat's blood.